Perfection

This 1936 photo of a cocktail room stopped me dead in my tracks. (Yes, we can just stop the post right here. A cocktail room. How utterly fantastic and so very civilized. I'm going to call my living room a cocktail room from now on because it is where the cocktails are drunk in my home.) Everything about this room sums up what I love best: Chinoiserie; a mural; cocktails; a dark floor (perhaps linoleum or some type of composite?) with what appears to be metal inlay.

The mural was painted by Allyn Cox, famous for his murals at the US Capitol. You may also remember my post about the Peacock Mansion here in Atlanta with its Allyn Cox mural in the dining room (see below). How I wish the cocktail room photo were in color, but here is a description of the room:

A corner of a cocktail room in a house in Glencoe, Illinois, with murals by Allyn Cox. The background is pale yellow, the figures are a luminous blue-white, with black touches in hair and shoes. The room itself is done in grey, with splashes of vermilion.

Perfection. Enough said.


The dining room of the Goodrum House (aka the Peacock Mansion) with its Allyn Cox mural.